Citizens of Albion!

Google has just alerted me to this review of Black Juice, the special, eleven-story Gollancz edition. Paul Skevington writes that

'When I had finished the first story ... I had an odd reluctance to proceed any further. because 'Singing My Sister Down' was so good and so powerful that it made me fear that if I continued further within the volume I would be sure not to encounter anything half so good again.

'Thankfully, in this I was entirely wrong.'

He reckons

'Lanagan's stories are surreal wonderlands infused with the bitter taste of reality, as beguiling as one and as morally complex as the other,'

which I think is very nicely put, and he finishes up with a flourish:

'This is a book that will shake the world of fiction, opening it up and pulling out precious salts for those of us who care about fiction as art. The repercussions will be felt for years to come.'

Now, a small, discreet English bird told me that copies of Black Juice are winging their way back to the publisher at a frightening rate, so if you want to shake someone's fictional world apart this Christmas, you'd better get a wriggle on, hadn't you?